We had high expectations for Martinique: after spending a month in the English islands (I know, they�'re independent now, but since they�'re ex-British colonies, the French cruisers refer to them as English as opposed to the French islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe, St Barts and St Martin), some with very little in term of infrastructure and limited food supplies; we were looking forward to some shopping for French goodies, maybe wandering in the �"large�" city of Fort de France, enjoying some cosmopolitan atmosphere for a change. Even Marc and Anne added to the list, one wanting new DVDs and the other a new bike, to enjoy before school year resumed!

One thing I am learning about cruising though, is that the best laid plans rarely work out and whatever expectations we may have, are not always met. I�'d like to say that we toured this magnificent island, visited one of the many rum distilleries, enjoyed the January sales and shopped tiIl we dropped�...but we didn�'t do any of it. In Martinique, our schedule was �"sabotaged�" in 3 ways: poor land transportation, strong winds and bad health; which saw us confined to a couple of anchorages, busy with boat based activities instead. Also we had a few friends to catch up with, and luckily , these reunions went according to plans.

We first anchored off the village of St Anne, on the south coast, after a bumpy crossing from St Lucia. The bay is supposed to be one of the best spots on the island, lined by a long white sandy beach home to a few resorts, Club Med being the largest. The local village is very small and quaint, with only 2 streets, a handful of restaurants and bar, our favourite spot being La Dunette for a sunset drink. There isn�'t much to do there but we�'d rather stay here than at the marina at Le Marin around the corner: that requires eyeball navigation, with shoals everywhere, we ran aground twice with the dinghy as we could not see the channel (or would not follow it, depends on the driver!) It took 2 days to get organised: new SIM card for the phone, tried and failed to hire a car (tourists too afraid to go to North Africa this year, so rush to Caribbean�'s instead, meaning no cars for hire for 2 weeks!), public buses are non-existent so we�'d have to use Taxi Collectif (TC) instead which don�'t take you where you want to go! That stuffed up my shopping plans: the only supermarket accessible by dinghy was Leader Price, a discount store with only basic supplies, which we decided would have to do. Once the essentials were dealt with, we caught up with Bertrand (BACCHUS), who kindly picked us up to have dinner with his wife Catherine at their house in the hills of St Luce. It was a terrific night with great company, and so nice to be off the boat for a change.

We then sailed up to Grande Anse d�'Arlet, around the corner and caught up with other friends on GRIKYPAC, who we met 6 ½ years ago in La Rochelle, when we were preparing our previous boats for the transat. We went our separate ways after Portugal (they to Brasil, we to the Med), kept in touch over the years via logbooks and emails, sold our respective old boats and bought new ones at the same time so here we are now: both families starting a new voyage on new cats, meeting in a Caribbean cove! Marc and Remi (both boys so much bigger now!) resumed their friendship, while we made up for lost time with Jean-Louis and Ingrid. As this was the final week of school holidays, the kids made the most of it snorkelling, diving from the wharf with Remi and a bunch of other boat kids, scuba diving and tube riding (courtesy of JL who seriously should consider a new career as a sports instructor), cards playing, �...We have become very good at doing nothing, �"forcing�" ourselves to go snorkelling or walk along the beach. Maybe when Terry runs out of books and I get sick of food experiments, we�'ll venture more ashore!

The weather has been typical of this time of the year: the trade winds have been blowing steadily during the day, air as still as in the evening, rain squalls in the middle of the night (we�'ve been up like yoyos closing hatches). It�'s just as well we�'ve been having a glorious time and having troubles moving on. The wind has been our latest our excuse for staying so long!

And just when the wind eased enough to sail, Terry pulled his back in while lifting the small dinghy on deck, which meant another 3 days of waiting. Of course we all felt sorry for him, but no one minded staying a little longer: Grande Anse is a beautiful place to be �"stuck�" in and Marc and Anne enjoyed their new set of friends. So as the days went by, we revised our plans to do multiple stops along the coast or even tour around the island by car, and having spent longer than we intended here, decided to sail straight up to Dominica instead. It�'s all about going with the flow really!

I wasn't going to write about this week, as nothing nice and interesting happened. But then I was reminded that some of our readers may like to know about the "nitty gritty" side of cruising, so to show that it's not always bright sunshine and pina coladas on the beach, here it goes.

It was an awful 9 hour passage from Bequia to St Lucia. We sailed in company with Bacchus who left one hour ahead of us taking advantage of a windless period at dawn. It didn't help much, though. We had two channels to cross, between Bequia and St Vincent (which was a little rough but we managed OK), and St Vincent and St Lucia. The St Vincent Channel (25 miles) has a bad reputation and lived up to it: square waves, NE winds 35 knots wrapping around the north tip of St Vincent and roaring thru the channel. One minute we were sailing comfortably in the lee of the island with 10-15 knots of breeze, the next we were burying our nose into big swells and sails were flapping like crazy. The last time we met such horrible conditions we were in the Solomon Islands in 1997! I took some Sturgeron as a precaution and I'm glad I did, the kids didn't fare so well however and got sick. The pressure of the waves smashing into our starboard side was so great, that 2 of our overhead hatches leaked badly and we ended up with Anne's cabin and ours flooded with salt water. Not happy, as it took 2 days to clean up the mess (dry mattresses, linen, clothes, rinse off the salt from the bilge...). How this happened no one knows: once we were at anchor, Terry tried to test with a hose on full pressure but there were no leaks, our friend Bertrand suggested that the hatches are not mounted flush, and when pounding in rough weather the fibreglass flexes and bends, allowing for water to come in thru minute cracks. Hmmmm, if that's the case, we're not going to windward in strong winds any more. I can't bear the idea of cleaning up again!

While Bacchus (Bertrand, Anne and their 8 guests) pushed on to Martinique, we decided to call it a day and anchor off Soufriere, half way up St Lucia's west coast. On any sunny day, it would have been a perfect anchorage, at the bottom of one of the Pitons, but after such a bumpy ride, having to pick up a mooring in the middle of a rain squall, boat boys asking us if we wanted to visit the local volcano, we didn't want any hassle and elected to remain on board to rest (and clean up!) for 2 days. I did try to convince the family to go ashore and take a hike up one of the Pitons, or maybe have lunch at the Hotel Chocolat (highly recommended by ARC friends Magali and David, from ENSEMBLE) but one look at the steep path up the hill and the advice to hire a local to guard the boat while unattended, made a compelling case for staying put. The most exercise we accomplished was a snorkelling session at the bottom of the Pitons, which was kind of spooky: the "hill" reaches steeply 2250 feet above the water, then the base falls off to a depth of 1600 feet underwater. There was very little marine life close to shore, and all I can remember is swimming in very deep blue bottomless water!

Final stopover was Rodeny Bay Marina, where besides cleaning up, we picked up the kids 'school books for 2012, which had been posted by the Australian schools. We had to laugh, as Marc's box had been "missent to India" hence the delayed delivery. The mistake was on the Aussie's side, where someone misread West Indies for India! It was also the last occasion to catch up with other ARC crew (Felicity J) heading for Panama then Australia, and of course Drina who seems to be on the same path as us (Christian we are forever grateful for all the burned movies, though both Marc and Anne seem to be addicted to the Modern Family TV series. Not sure it is a good thing...)

It was a strange feeling to return to RBM after the hype of last December , a lot of ARC boats have been left here for the winter, the small shacks and steel bands have gone, and Terry and I can't help but feel it's time to move on. So our next move is Martinique, 28 miles north, back to French territory and there is no guessing as to which crew member on this boat is most happy about it!

Anne had the idea of writing some articles for the blog in a category called "Kids island". Below is her first posting, unedited, hopefully the first of many more to come. Hope you enjoy!

Hi! I'm Anne and my birthday is May 9th. My favourite colours are all bright colours. When I heard about the trip I was sad and happy at the same time. I miss my dog Tiffany and the whole entire family. Ever since I came on the boat I've loved the adventures, seeing turtles and other animals.

What we do
Everyday except Sunday and Saturday we do school in the morning. In the afternoon we go swimming or go to town.
When we have friends where we go that means we spend time with them. Sometimes if were interested we go on tours.

Home schooling
In the morning when we do school the most important subjects in school are, math and english. In our spare time we do other subjects if we want to, like art, music, science and drama. My favourite subject is art.